Creating Phrasekeeper
The reason I bought a Ledger Nano S was, I wanted to protect most of my crypto coins and tokens. The old process was that I downloaded some wallet generators from Github, generated it offline, printed it on paper and locked it away in a safe place. But it didn’t felt good. The scripts I used could be manipulated, although they were open source on Github, but I was too lazy reading through the whole code. The printer could be hacked. And in worst case, the paper I printed the private keys on, could be damaged due to fire, water or even time itself. So a well known hardware wallet seemed to be a good option.
I ordered it directly on their website, got it a few days later, and initialized it. Only to realize, there is one weak spot, I wanted to get around with in first place: paper.
When you initialize the hardware wallet, you’ll get a so called “mnemonic passphrase” which you have to write down (offline of course), on a piece of printed cardboard which is in the package. A passphrase consists of 12 to 24 or more easy to read words which are defined in a very long list. These words together are your passphrase. Better than every password you could imagine, due to the amount of variations.
This passphrase is all you get to recover access to your hardware wallet in case it gets damaged or lost (Trezor, and I guess most other hardware wallets work this way too).
And you only have this one chance to write it down. If you don’t do it or loose your passphrase, and your hardware wallet gets damaged, you will have a very, very bad time. There is no way to gain access to your crypto assets anymore. They’re lost forever (well in fact, they aren’t lost, but you can’t access them anymore).
So I wrote it down on that cardboard. But I wasn’t satisfied.
Don’t get me wrong, the hardware wallet itself is great! You can go on any website you want, and nothing can steal your private key(s) from the wallets inside your hardware wallet. No one gets ever to see the private key(s). They will stay on the device, forever. It only does the handshake for you to gain access to a hot wallet like myetherwallet or other desktop wallets. Exactly what I wanted. Super safe. But having the backup, my passphrase, rotting on a piece of paper was making me crazy.
I talked to my wife and asked her “which way could I put these words on something that is more robust than paper?”. She answered “you could emboss it like on credit cards”. Brilliant! I thought. Just to realize a few moments later, that it’s very unhandy to buy a device which can do that. Also a plastic card wouldn’t make such difference in terms of a house fire. But the basic idea of stamping something into something else was what got me.
Some days past and I thought about how I could achieve to save the passphrase in a secure way. In this time I came across other products on the market. Cryptosteel for example uses a stainless steel card where you slide little stainless steel plates with letters on it into the card. But with 99 Dollars it is as expansive as the hardware wallet itself, which I think is too expensive. Another product was a plate with 12 rows on it and a hand engraving machine. Also 99 Dollars. I looked up the prices on Alibaba and it turned out that the engraving machine was like 3 Dollars and the metal plate also couldn’t be that expansive. And the fact that it only has 12 rows and you have to engrave yourself with hand writing wasn’t the thing I searched for. I can’t read my own written words a few weeks later, so how would I be able to read engraved words. I’m not a specialist in engraving things.
I brainstormed some ideas and looked for fitting materials and things I could use. After a while I came across punching letters. These were used to mark tools and other metal materials in the metal industry. The complete plan unfolded itself in front of my very eyes. Punch the words on metal!
I ordered a set of punching letters and got a piece of Aluminium from the local DIY market. I drew some markings on it and ta-da, the first prototype was born.
I scratched the lines with such a hand engraving machine and a lineal (turned out, that this hand engraving machine is at least good for this. But it also wears down very fast. Got it for 8€ at Amazon).
Then I punched some letters in. I needed to make sure that even a long word would fit into my prototype.
It worked! So I found the right metrics for my product. I was quickly brainstorming some names and “KaltKey” dropped out of my brain. (Kalt = German word for cold).
I also directly had some rough ideas for a version were you can punch a private key with numbers, small and big letters on it. But I focused on the passphrase version, for now.
I bought a month version of Adobe Illustrator and made a first version.
Next step was to find a company which sold Aluminium plates and also offered some work like printing and drilling holes into it. After a few days and some emails and phone calls later, I found one. I ordered the first manufactured prototype. But since I came to the conclusion that “KaltKey” isn’t sexy enough for the product, I just designed it with the words “logo”.
After a week, I got the first versions.
I knew I had to do a lot advance payment for this product to be done, and I knew this wouldn’t be the only prototype I needed to design and test. But I was hooked and wanted to create a product were I can be proud of and satisfied with.
This prototype had the purpose to test the quality of the metal manufacturer company I wanted to work with. It turned out to be very good! So I could move on. The first hundred Euros were spent.
In the meantime I brainstormed with some friends and my wife to find a more fitting name for the product. At first I wanted to name it “Hodl Card”, but that could bring me in trouble with licenced names. After a while and some name iterations, I saw it in front of me: Phrasekeeper!
As usual, when I have new product ideas, I checked if there is something else that has the name, and, of course, if the url(s) and twitter handle is free, hehe. And it was! I saved phrasekeeper.com and phrasekeeper.de as well as twitter.com/phrasekeeper.
I quickly designed a logo.
The new order of prototypes had the purpose to see how the logo and new design looked on Aluminium plates and to test it under fire.
Why Aluminium? Well, these letter punches are good enough to punch letters into stainless steel. But you would need a strong base, like an anvil and a heavy hammer to get that done. And that’s nothing I can provide in a package which should be affordable and weighs under 2kg. So I needed another, more smooth material, but it should also be durable during a house fire.
The melting point of Aluminium is at about 660°C (1220°F), a house fire can get up to around 1000°C (1832°F). So I needed something to protect the Aluminium. Since I had a plate with the table and a plate with the logo on it, I decided to test a version with surrounding Aluminium plates and a version with surrounding stainless steel plates.
In the meantime I let friends test hammer the thing and noticed, that an even ground is crucial, because a wooden table would be too soft and the plate would deform while punching it with punching letters.
I didn’t wanted to tell the customer “please only use it on a workbench”. It should work everywhere. Even on a cheap Ikea table which wobbles when you hit it. But I needed to come back to this topic later. Firstly the fire test had to be done.
I bought a welding torch, went into the backyard of the apartment building were me and my wife are living in, and tested the prototypes.
Maybe a welding torch with way more than 1000°C was a bit over the top, but the results would have been the same with one that only had a top temperature of 1000°C, like a house fire.
At first it looked like a success for the stainless steel surrounding version. The Aluminium surrounding version clearly would just melt after a while over 600°C in a house fire.
At the second look, I noticed, that the hot stainless steel just melted the Aluminium plate inside (duh ...). It wasn’t fully destroyed, but it got stuck to the stainless steel plates. And when I tried to separate them, well …
I was depressed. Hundreds and hundreds of Euros spent, and I needed to start over again. That’s how it goes, I guess.
It had to be done. And so I searched for other materials.
I tested stainless steel again. Maybe it would work?
I ordered some steel base plates in various thicknesses. Maybe this could function as an anvil. Also it would solve the deforming problem. But unfortunately it didn’t helped punching on stainless steel. I was able to punch some letters in, but the Chinese punching letters and even the more expansive German ones were just scratching the surface. The steel base plate were heavy, and the plates didn’t deform anymore, but it wasn’t heavy enough, like an anvil.
I had to find another material. So I looked for a table of metal melting points. It needed to be durable at 1000°C. Steel? Too strong for punching letters. Titanium? Even stronger. Silver? Too expansive. Gold? … . Copper? … Copper? Hmmm, when I designed the first version, I already had copper in mind, but I also had in mind, that copper isn’t cheap. In fact, there are people robbing copper pipes from old buildings because it sells good on the market.
Since I had a little dispute with my current metal manufacturing company because the last invoice were way too high and it seemed like they wanted to try how far they could get with me, I searched for another company were I could order cropped copper plates. I found one, and ordered some unprinted versions, just to test the material.
I needed to test if copper is smooth enough for the punching letters. Since it’s even more dense than steel, I wasn’t really expecting much.
The plates arrived, and I tested the punching letters together with the steel base plate that would be in the package of my product.
It worked! It really worked! And on top of this, copper looks stunning awesome! I found my material and was super hyped.
The dispute with my metal manufacturing company were solved and I called them to order some prototypes made of copper. But they told me, that copper is hard for them to get, and maybe also a bit expansive. I told them that I got copper plates from another company, not super cheap, but also not really expansive. So they told me, I could ordere the plates from that company and send them over to the metal manufacturing company, so that they can drill holes and print the designs. I agreed and ordered the first ten plates which would result in five Phrasekeepers.
In the meantime I ordered five sets of punching letters from the company I wanted to mass order at. But when they arrived, I instantly sent two of them back, since these Chinese punching letters had such a bad quality, that I couldn’t use them for my product.
That made me thinking. From the very beginning, I had a price in mind what I wanted to take for the final product package. And these Chinese punching letters, which I would have gotten from a German distributor company, were cheap enough to be a good fit for the package. But when I order hundreds or even thousands of these, and have to send like 30%, or more, of it back due to low quality, that wouldn’t be healthy for a young product, and also I wanted to deliver a good quality product.
I contacted a german manufacturer again, which I contacted a few weeks before for an offer of their punching letters. This company was the only one I found with really good quality punching letters and an affordable price. Others wanted like 70 Euro for a set. That’s way more than the price I wanted to take for my whole product package. But this company offered me a price, which was like three times higher than the Chinese ones. That would lower the profit, but would absolutely worth it.
I tested them.
Turned out, the German ones were not only made in better quality, but they also have the feature to show you which letter you’re holding, and simultaneously you know that you’re holding it the right way. Perfect!
I struggled a bit with packaging design. This product is a good example of waste of packaging. Surely it needs to be send in a delivery package, but you would usually want to give it an own branded package too. I don’t like this idea. One would just throw it into the trash after it’s opened when the Phrasekeeper is used. So I decided to order some jute bags with robes. I’m currently not done with the packaging problem, but I would like to put everything in a jute bag with robes, since you could reuse the bag for other things. But that’s a topic I have to handle with later.
In the meantime I got the first five Phrasekeeper in the final version!
They are just wonderful. I really do like the result and the product.
I’ve managed to find a way to make it durable for most common environmental influences like water or fire.
I’ve managed to find a way to create a package were everyone can use the product and the only thing one needs is a hammer.
I’ve managed to find a way to offer it for an affordable price in the future.
An all this took three months, a lot of thinking, waiting and money, to get to this point.
Next step is (probably) to create a Kickstarter campaign and find a way to offer it “over the sea” (I’m from Germany). I’ve invitations to some crypto meetups around were I’m living and also a Blockchain Conference in Germany to introduce Phrasekeeper to the audience. I’m super excited what the future will bring!
I built a rudimentary website, just to have “something” to show: phrasekeeper.com
You can also follow Phrasekeeper on Twitter for updates and news: twitter.com/phrasekeeper
